Service Lifecycle Management (SLM) is the profit-driven optimization of the system of processes employed by durable goods manufacturers and their service network partners to ensure products perform as promised after the sale.
Servigistics is the leading provider of Service Lifecycle Management solutions that enable companies to transform their service business operations and access new sources of revenue, profits, competitive differentiation and customer loyalty.
The Service Lifecycle consists of four main “meta-processes”: Planning, Execution, Information Management, and Measurement & Control. Functional processes like field service, service parts management, and service logistics serve as building blocks for these meta-processes. In industries like high-tech, automotive, medical devices, industrial equipment, and aerospace & defense, the difference between product companies that emerge as leaders and those that lag in the upcoming decade will depend largely on how well they embrace the “interconnectedness” of these functional processes.
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The Lifecycle Imperative
To maximize financial returns from post-sales service, P&L owners must have an actionable view of three critical data points:
1) Total service costs2) Risks to service and product revenue targets
3) Threats to customer loyalty.
Seeking this visibility, product companies are investing more of their IT budgets in services automation, but industry data shows that they are not fully satisfied with the returns they are realizing from their investments.
The reason? Most service automation investments made to date have either been in point solutions that address single components of the service lifecycle like field service or warranty; or in extensions to ERP systems, which were never intended to address the unique operating challenges found in the service supply chain. In other words, these companies have ignored the service lifecycle imperative.
The Service Lifecycle is a System
The Service Lifecycle Imperative is explained by system-based optimization theory. Due to the compounding effects of interdependency among the components of any system, even slight performance shortfalls in service functional process areas are greatly magnified when overall throughput of the process is measured. When process interdependencies are considered, the overall system and ultimately end-to-end process effectiveness can be truly optimized.
The ONLY way to accurately and consistently consider these countless interdependencies is with an end-to-end, fully integrated service process and technology backbone that ties together the service lifecycle meta-processes and functional processes.
Download the Service Lifecycle Management white paper to learn more.
